


Deathbed Confessions

by phoenixsong



Category: Emily of New Moon - L. M. Montgomery
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-19
Updated: 2005-10-19
Packaged: 2017-10-11 20:10:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/116599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixsong/pseuds/phoenixsong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aileen Kent has been keeping a secret from her son.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deathbed Confessions

**Author's Note:**

> Extra scene, very late in _Emily's Quest_. I actually started mentally sketching this, oh, about six years before I actually wrote it, but never quite got the concentration and time to finish the scene out. The language probably isn't quite LMM-style, but I think the content is believeable for the characters -- especially Mrs. Kent.

Aileen Kent could feel death coming for her, and she welcomed him. But first, before finally being reunited with David, she must speak to her son.

"I have been," gasp, "a poor mother for you, most of your life, and most of mine."

Teddy was gentle at his mother's bedside. "No, mother, it's alright. I understand." Meaningless lies, but she was dying. What good would it do to say otherwise?

"You don't. But you will." Another shallow breath. "I have to tell you the truth, before I die. I know I am. I must meet...your father with a clear conscience."

Teddy's eyebrows went up. "My father?" As far back as he could remember, this was the first time she had ever voluntarily spoken of his father, who had died before he was born.

"Yes. You see, I was once beautiful. And your father loved me. He did -- I know this now, though I didn't for a long time. But there was an accident after we married, a fire that made me look like this." She indicated her face, the face Teddy had seen all his life with red scars crossing it. Then she turned away from him. "I thought he couldn't love me anymore. It made me unhappy, and jealous, and I did something terrible. I -- I killed his dog."

Teddy remembered his own dog from so long ago, and the look on his mother's face when he had told her he would stop loving her if she killed it the way she had his other pets, and suddenly understood the haunted horror that had crossed it. Aileen continued.

"Then he went away, on a trip, and died before I knew he was even sick. It was..." Her dignity saved her from being indiscreet, made her pause, and she finished the sentence, "It was all not long before you were born. And I thought he died hating me still."

Teddy thought she would stop there. The next words out of her mouth, after a few more breaths, therefore were the last he expected to hear cross her lips.

"Emily." Aileen's eyes brightened, almost feverishly, as Teddy started at the name he'd tried to forget. "Emily changed that. She gave him back to me. He wrote a letter, and she found it."

Teddy privately thought, for a moment, that his mother's mind was finally going, along with her body. He looked at his mother's face again, and knew she was telling the truth, though perhaps garbled in the details. Did it matter? He'd noticed when she moved away from Blair Water with him that she was calmer, saner than when he was a child. He thought it was because he had never married -- in spite of his own best attempts to do so, mind you -- that her jealousy had faded. This, though, was a fuller explanation.

"She found his letter, in a book, and gave it to me. And he said he forgave me my jealousy, and that he loved me, and oh, my son! I will see him soon, I can feel it! David has forgiven me, and I can go to him and rest." She sighed, content for the moment, while Teddy contemplated this.

A frown crossed Aileen's face. Should she tell him about the other letter? She suspected her son still loved Emily -- should she tell him what else she'd done in her jealousy of anyone who would take her son, the last thing she had from David, away from her? _No._ She couldn't. Not today. She could see the understanding of what she'd done to his father, and how much it had meant to get that letter, dawning on his face. He could forgive her now for all that was past, but if she told him about the other letter -- the one Emily should have gotten -- he would hate her again. Still, if she was going to have a totally clean conscience...later. Maybe later. But not now. She couldn't face that now. Instead, she allowed him to kiss her goodnight, and then he left as she drifted off and the night nurse came back into the room…

Sometime that night, Aileen Kent died, along with all her jealous love, and the one last secret she couldn't bear to confess.


End file.
